


Ash and Water

by Asterrious



Series: Stories from the Outback [5]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: My Junkrat is always trans, Trans Junkrat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 09:24:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7612636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asterrious/pseuds/Asterrious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Junkrat is forced to take a bath. He contemplates himself, to disastrous results for the bathroom. (TWs inside)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ash and Water

**Author's Note:**

> Inadvertently requested by an anon complaining about an abundance of trans head canons. This one's for you honey.
> 
> Trigger warnings for dysphoria, period talk, surgery mentions, mild self-harm, and non-sexual nudity.

The bathroom had been pristine white before he’d been set loose inside it. Hog was demanding he take his first shower in a month and of course he was complaining- Junkrat had grown fond of the layer of soot that currently covered him. He’d memorized the thick patches to be found behind his neck and along his sides and enjoyed the way his blonde hair turned black if he ran his hands through it too much. It was an instant disguise, or so he’d said to Roadhog before the larger man shut the bathroom door and Rat heard the distinct sound of weight settling against it. The big lug was sitting right outside so Junkrat couldn’t break out or blow it off it’s hinges.

Made it absolutely no fun, really.

He sighed as he looked over the white floor tile, already stained with the muddy prints of his boot and his peg leg. Somehow, even after days without added dirt, the mud was still fresh and drippy, as if he’d only stepped in it an hour ago. He considered it a personal accomplishment, though he knew it drove Hog crazy.

Actually, that was definitely why he considered it an accomplishment.

Sighing under his breath, Rat shifted from foot to peg leg, watching the dirt stain change as he squished and rubbed at it. There was nothing within him that wanted to get in that bathtub and scrub himself until he was clean enough for Hog, but he also knew there was no way he was going to get out of the room until he did so. Blowing a hole in the wall was always an option, but Hog would definitely catch him before he could get far, and that meant an angry Roadhog _and_ a bath. It was better to take the lesser of the two evils and just get this over with.

Junkrat still didn’t move, gaze rising from the soiled floor to the mirror bolted to the wall across from him. His reflection was the same as it always was and he bared his teeth a few times, watching the lines of ash on his face crack and flake. His teeth were yellow and stained, and it made it hard to pick out the gold tooth among the real ones. Not much dental care out in the apocalyptic wasteland of the Outback. His eyes, a strange shade of yellow, matched everything about him, from his hair to his smile to the patches he liked to stitch over holes in his clothes.

Not for the first time, he wished his hair was red. Deep red, the color at the heart of an explosion, a color that invoked heat and dust and passion. Not the dirty blonde you could only find at the very edges of an explosion.

Maybe he should steal some hair dye the next time he had an opportunity to do so. After the debacle at the doughnut shop, he was on permanent lockdown. Grounded like a fucking teenager, right down to the irritable person who sat in a chair at night by the door in case he tried to sneak out. It was driving him up the wall: he’d been locked inside for two weeks straight and Junkrat was starting to think that he was going to go crazy here. Hog was resolute though, and any pleading was met with characteristic stony silence. Sometime, in between his fiddling with his broken prosthetic and tinkering with his mines, Roadhog had slipped out and bought an ass-load of groceries. There was enough soda and chips to keep them fed for weeks and he hated those grocery bags with every fiber of his being. They meant he wasn’t going anywhere until the heat on them was absolutely, positively, dead.

So there wasn’t any hair dye in his future, but he did think death was a distinct possibility. Sitting still was going to be the end of him.  
The sound of an impatient fist banged against the wall and he jumped, turning to see the door hanging slightly off it’s hinges.

“Wha’ th’ fuck mate?”

Roadhog grunted and Junkrat stuck his tongue out at the door.

“Alwright, alwright, m’going.”

Sighing, Rat reached up to pull his explosives vest off, careful to disconnect the heart monitor fully. As a final ‘fuck you’ to whoever managed to off him, it was one of his favorite ideas yet, but that didn’t mean he wanted to waste it on blowing this piece-of-shit-bathroom skyhigh. When he heard the beep that meant it realized he wasn’t dead, he pulled tugged it off over his head and tossed it into the corner, cringing at the last second when he heard the clatter of the bombs on the ground. If he wasn’t careful as he disarmed himself, it didn’t matter that he’d taken the time for his heart monitor.

Junkrat loosened the belt around his skinny hips and his cargo shorts dropped to the floor immediately, too big for him even when the leather belt was tight. He preferred his shorts big though: that meant big pockets, and big pockets were good for holding all sorts of useful things. Clothes made to fit him had teeny, tiny little pockets, fit only for the smallest of cherry bombs. Rat was a professional, dammit, and professionals were ready to work at all times. 

Once he’d shoved the pile of dirty clothing into the corner, he sat down on the toilet lid to begin unlacing his boot. It had been so long since he’d done so that the laces were crusted into place, stiff and unwieldy and awkward to pull out of the quadruple knot he kept them in at all times. Junkrat cursed quietly as he fumbled, finally resorting to shoving his fingers as far down into the boot as he could and attempting to wiggle the damn thing off.

Instead, his fingers nicked the hidden pocket he’d made and he cut himself on the sharp little knife tucked away there.

Howling curses as though he’d managed to cut another limb off, he jerked his hand out of the shoe and kicked out in frustration, a child throwing a temper tantrum. The motion did the trick though and his boot flew into the opposite wall, leaving a huge black mark of mud. Junkrat sat up straight and huffed at it, frowning at the small puncture wound on the tip of his finger.

Despite the still-present layer of dirt, he popped the digit into his mouth and sucked on the wound as he pulled his legs up to his body and got to work undoing the bolts that held his peg leg to his leg. The downside to metal prosthetics was that he couldn’t get in the water with them on, but he’d be damned if he was going to switch to light plastic or some other bullshit material. Junkrat worked with metal- it was what he knew best, and the scraps of junk he carried around with him in his pockets were usually more than enough to fix something broken. Didn’t want to get caught with a malfunctioning arm he couldn’t fix up himself. 

Once he’d worked the damn thing off, he set it in the center of the bathroom floor. Didn’t want it close enough to get splashed, but it had to be close enough in case he had to get up in a hurry. The perfect fuckin’ balance, right there.

Junkrat leaned over and placed his mechanical arm on the edge of the tub, giving his sluggishly bleeding finger one final lick before he pulled it out of his mouth. It looked suspiciously clean among all his other fingers now and his mouth tasted like gasoline and metal. The taste had never bothered him. His tongue darted out of his mouth to lick at his lips as he carefully rose from the toilet seat, balancing himself on his arms. He’d done it countless times before, but disconnecting his prosthetics always made him feel a little more vulnerable. A little more open to caution, to moving slowly in case the grease on his hands made him slip.

Swinging his leg over the side of the tub, Junkrat settled in the corner of it, giggling at the perfect imprint of his ass left on the toilet seat. In all honesty, he didn’t know how the layers of grime had managed to make their way inside his shorts too, but it did make for lovely art.

“Oi, Hoggie! Make sure ya check out my painting on the toilet! S’a gorgeous one!”

No answer, but he hadn’t really expected one. 

Once he was settled in the tub, he propped his mechanical arm on top of his knees and began to work at the straps with his good arm. This prosthetic hadn’t been made by his own hands, but he had drawn the plans up himself and supervised the construction, and he really was quite proud of the results. He’d never felt the need to upgrade his leg, but his arm had to be perfect to work on his bombs. There was stabilizing technology in every portion of the limb that could move and he’d watched his left hand for hours, making and unmaking bombs, just to make sure he’d be able to do them with the robotic hand.

He didn’t mind the arm so much, now. Every now and then he had to touch it up with a coat of paint and buffing out rust was always a pain in the ass, but he liked the solid, steady feel of the metal compared to his often-twitchy left hand. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t have liked his right arm back, but Rat was making do, and that was always the goal of those who’d grown up in the Outback. 

Just get through it.

When he’d unbuckled the thing, Junkrat reached over to set it next to his leg. The motion bumped his chest against the edge of the tub and the knot of scars beneath his pecs felt strange against the cool metal. There was almost no feeling in the skin there but he reached up to knead one of them anyway, looking down to inspect the old marks. The surgeon had said he needed to rest for weeks and avoid getting sunburned and slather cream on his chest to avoid the scars. Rat had done exactly none of these things and it had resulted in puckered pink lines that would never fade. He didn’t mind that much- the point of the surgery had been to get some shit off his chest, and that couldn’t happen without a trade-off. 

Plus, he’d gotten to see Roadhog dressed in surgical scrubs and a surgical mask, standing behind the sweating doctor with a newly sterilized hook in his big, beefy hands. Backup, just in case the three wads of cash Junkrat had set on the man’s desk weren’t enough to ensure he wasn’t going to pull anything. It was probably the longest surgery of the man’s life but Junkrat had woken feeling fresher than a spring daisy, once he stopped vomiting from the effects of the anesthesia.

That had been at least a year and a half ago, now that he thought about it. It felt like a lifetime, if he was going to be honest. The years ran together and it was hard to sort specific things out, his memories fading some things into fog and outlining others with stark clarity. While the day he’d finally gotten rid of his tits was crystal clear, the times he’d actually had them were less so.

Rat could barely remember running around the ruins surrounding Junkertown, scrambling in and out of piles of scrap to find things left behind by older Junkers. It was how he’d gotten the nickname Junkrat, always popping in and out of holes with something in his paws and a gap-tooted smile. Back then, he’d bound himself with bandages, the best he could find in the wastes. Puberty hadn’t done much more than make him taller and lanky, and for that he was grateful. There was never a moment he’d known he was a boy, just like there wasn’t usually a moment someone could point to in their life and say that was when they’d known they were a girl or boy. He just was.

His memory had even swallowed up the name his parents had given him when he was born. They’d been gone by the time he was six, and once everyone had taken to calling him Junkrat, his baptismal name had been blown away like sand in the wind. If he’d ever even been baptized. 

He couldn’t even remember what letter it’d started with. An A, maybe. Or an M. Jamison was a name he’d given himself one day when he was older and a suit wanted to hire him for a demolitions job. It had been all fancy, with a proper contract with the details of their terms and everything. He’d needed a proper name to sign it, or so the suit had said, and he’d made one up on the spot: Jamison for his favorite kind of whiskey, Fawkes because it sounded like ‘fucks’ and he’d heard someone say it once upon a time. It seemed to satisfy the guy long enough for Rat to cheat him out of his money and escape back to Junkertown, so he’d just stuck with it. Jamison was probably better than what he’d been born with anyway.

“Water!” Came a sudden low growl from the bathroom door and he jumped, striking his head against the tile of the shower wall.

“Fuck’s sake mate!” He shouted back, grumbling as he reached out for the bath faucet and turned it on to the hottest setting it could go. Water immediately began to flow out, filling the tub, and he leaned back to rub the sore spot on the back of his skull. “Yer lucky I don’t have a concussion!”

Or a concussion mine for that matter.

Junkrat’s foot twitched as the hot water touched his toes, sweeping over his tired body. The heat was what made the whole thing bearable, in his opinion. It reminded him of the heat of an explosion at his back and though it lacked the wonderful boom he’d come to expect, he still enjoyed lounging in the water until it was cold. When he managed to make himself get in, that was. 

Already the water was dyeing itself black, although only a few inches covered the bottom of the tub. He watched the soot swirl around in the water, knowing he’d have to drain and refill the tub a couple of times in order to get clean enough for Hog. Junkrat couldn’t even get started using soap or shampoo until he stripped away the slippery layer of grease and oil. Yellow eyes focused on the edge of the rising water, watching it creep it’s way up the sides of the tub, and he let out a long, exaggerated sigh, trying to make sure Hog would hear it in the other room.

“This is so boring!” He yelled at the door, kicking out at the side of the tub with his good foot. Water went sloshing over the side and he immediately congratulated himself for having the foresight to put his limbs out of the way of immediate danger. Self-awareness wasn’t his strong suit, but he did value his prosthetics enough to make a cursory effort at protecting them.

When the black water scattered all over the floors, sending dirt everywhere in crazy, beautiful patterns, Jamie found he rather liked it. So he began to send as much water over the side of the tub as he could, kicking out against the side and watching the droplets shoot across the floor. They landed in crazy patterns, black dots on the white of a bathroom that had never stood a chance. It was a miracle it had stayed clean long enough to get to this point, with both of the Junkers in and out of it 24/7 for two long weeks. He suspected Hog had something to do with that, given the bigger man’s propensity for cleanliness, but he’d made the fatal mistake of leaving Junkrat alone inside for an extended period.  
It was going to look like a rat’s nest by the time he was done with it.

Realizing he’d broken into manic laughter, Rat hung his torso over the side and scooped handfuls of water out, dropping them with a splash on the tiles. With his finger, he could draw little shapes in the ash on the ground and carefully, his signature smiley face began to form underneath careful hands.

Hog’s fist slammed into the door yet again and it gave a creaking grown, the already out-of-place hinges straining to hold up under attack.

“Water _in_ the tub.” Came the growl from outside and Junkrat groaned, pulling back from the edge of the tub with an annoyed mumble. He couldn’t do anything fun, apparently. 

There wasn’t much liquid left anyway, after his playtime, and so he reached out with his foot to undo the drain and let the black water fade away. Jamie had always been good at using his toes to pick things up from the ground when he was too lazy to bend over. His upper body shivered in the suddenly cold air and he crossed his arms over his chest in an attempt to stay warm, fingers prodding at his scars absently as he watched water swirl away down the drain. They were almost reassuring to feel underneath the calloused pads his fingers and he reached up to poke against one of his nipples, registering that he still couldn’t feel any sensation from them. Never would- they were fake ones the doc had put on, just so his chest would look normal. It didn’t bother him, and it would make a hell of a party trick to put something sharp through one and watch the people around him freak out.

When the water was fully drained, leaving only a small trail of soot behind on the bottom, he used his foot to turn the tap on once again. The hottest it could go was still not hot enough, but it would have to do for now. Not for the first time, he wished they could hole up in one of those fancy hotels that had Jacuzzi bathtubs in every room. It would sure be a hell of a lot easier to convince him to clean himself if there were jets of water included in the deal. 

Too risky, though. Those kinds of places had cameras everywhere and they were easy to pick out of a crowd, even with civilian disguises. He’d learned that the hard way at the doughnut shop. It still stung that he hadn’t gotten the chance to taste any of the fancy-ass doughnuts he’d bought. Even though he’d paid for them with actual money!

Grumbling to himself, Junkrat sank underneath the water when it was high enough and ran his hand through his hair, trying to untangle the worst of the matted knots there. His hair was greasy and oily at all times, and that meant it tangled itself up like someone had been tying knots in it when he wasn’t looking. Sometimes, in the Outback, he’d had to shave his head when he went months without showering, the hair a lost cause and prone to lice and other mites. It was disgusting, but that was life out there- casualties happened all the time and one of them just happened to be his hair.

Another was his tits, Rat thought, and giggled to himself. He reemerged from the water and remembered to turn off the tap as the water was inches from rising over the sides of the tub. Maybe that was how he’d finish the bath off; flooding the bathroom and causing damage so extensive that Hog would have to agree to them leaving. At this point, he’d be glad to change one hotel room for another, just to have a change of scenery. The number of roof tiles never changed, no matter how many times he counted them.

When trying to untangle the knots didn’t work, Junkrat settled for viciously pulling at them, wincing as he ripped several hairs from his head in the process. He repeated the pattern with several of the other larger knots, biting his lip each time but otherwise not really making any noise as he pulled clumps of hair out. They fell into the water and he kicked them away, both fascinated and disgusting by the little nests he’d pulled from his hair. Like fucking bird’s nests, they were. He was surprised they couldn’t pull eggs for breakfast out of his head.

That would be a fucking sight, right there- Hog standing next to a stove with a pan, accidentally crushing eggs in his huge hands and turning to Junkrat to pull another out of his blonde hair. Like a kid’s magic show. 

They should work out a way to do that. Maybe distract the guards while Rat attached the bombs, instead of having to sneak in undetected. 

“Roadie, make sure we get eggs for the next job we do, okay?” Junkrat yelled at the door and Roadhog grunted, not bothering to ask what for. Rat would likely forget about it before the next place they robbed, and he was very sure he didn’t want to know more about the inner workings of the young Junker’s mind than he already did. 

Already it was slipping from his mind as he ran his hand over his legs, watching more of the soot slip free. The water would quickly need to be drained again, but he thought he was clean enough for the next tub re-fill to be the last one. That meant he was going to have to actually use soap and the thought irritated him. The only kind of soap he’d ever liked was the kind you put in with your laundry. At least then he could make a nice explosion from it.

Hm.

“Hog, do we have any laundry detergent?” 

Another pause. Junkrat could almost hear the gears in his bodyguard’s head turning, as he debated whether he wanted to ask about the request or not. Even Rat could agree that it was suspicious.  
“No.”

Roadie’s tone of voice allowed for no follow up questions and Junkrat sighed, letting himself slip back underneath the water. He undid the drain with his toes yet again and listened to the sound of the water flowing down the drain, so much louder when he was submerged. By now, his freckles had started to emerge from the soot again, and when he could open his eyes he began to inspect them one by one. It was rare that he could actually see them well enough to do it, and the marks almost felt foreign on his body. Rat was much more at home with the feeling of grease on his skin than with the little marks that dotted his flesh. 

Tracing between them with a finger, Junkrat inadvertently glanced down and found himself staring at the ruffle of pubic hair between his legs. Coarse and sandy blonde, just like the hair on his head. And below that, a clit, a cunt, and something he hated with every fiber of his being.

Truly, the Junker tried to avoid being butt naked with every ounce of his being. His tits had been relatively easy to take care of, since it didn’t require a lot of specialization, but his cunt was different. They needed a specialized surgeon and lots of recovery time. More than that, he needed to be absolutely sure it was a step he wanted to take; which he wasn’t.

He felt it was out of place, but it was also a part of him. A part he wasn’t sure he was ready to give up. Absently, he twisted his fingers in his pubic hair and began to pull, ignoring the pain. It was ridiculously easy to rip out the hairs and he did it continually as the bath water refilled. An expression of his hatred maybe, or just his confusion. Junkrat wasn’t in the habit of thinking about why he did things, and he wasn’t about to start now. Even the pain could feel good, when his mind was overloading, and it was beginning to. The hot water wasn’t enough to pull his attention away and soon he had small bleeding marks on the thin skin between his legs. Rat stared, fascinated by the way the red blood swirled with the new water. He’d only ever gotten a few periods in his lifetime, malnutrition delaying them for years, and once he’d started nicking testosterone from any medical tent he could fine, they’d gone away for good.

That was fine by him. He’d always been disgusted by the idea of pieces of his body falling out of him every single goddamn month. It left him with respect for those who could actually stomach it for years of their life.

Junkrat had never found himself attractive, not that he’d ever really thought about it. There were more important things to worry about in the Wastelands, and mirrors were few and far between. Puddles of water were usually radioactive and you didn’t want to stare into them for too long, which left windows and windshields as his only way to know what he looked like. It wasn’t like it mattered in the Outback at all, and he found he hadn’t started to magically care about it once he was within the polished and glittering cities.  
But his cunt certainly didn’t help. 

Eventually he managed to tear his hands away from ripping out hair and reached for the shampoo, pulling a face when he saw that it was lemon scented. Junkrat hated the scent of lemon. There wasn’t any help for it though, seeing as Roadhog wouldn’t let him out of the bathroom if he didn’t smell as fresh as a daisy. Whatever those smelled like.

The shampoo and conditioner helped get rid of the rest of the knots in his hair and he dunked himself again with a giggle to get rid of the suds, opening his eyes under the water to watch the strands of hair wave in the mini-currents his movement created. It stung, but he imagined there was a jellyfish on top of his head, whose tendrils he was watching sway to and fro. When Hog had taken him to the beach for the first time, Rat had managed to step on a washed up jelly with his flesh foot and spent the rest of the day complaining about the pain and angry red marks. Ever since there, he’d nursed a healthy respect for the creatures. They stung if you crossed them, and damn if that wasn’t close to the code Junkers lived by.

He rinsed his hair thoroughly and reached of the soap, squinting at it suspiciously before he began to attack the patches of dirt still on his skin. More freckles were revealed as he scrubbed, not bothering with the washcloth hanging over the side of the tub as it had already been soaked by his earlier splashing around. As if he’d even have given it the time of day anyway. 

Quickly his nail marks embedded themselves in the soap as he used it, the bar already reduced by half as he worked his way up his legs. Old scars came into view along with his freckles and there was almost nostalgic quality about them. Junkrat leaned over to coo at an especially large one on his leg, face stretching into a wide grin as he remembered the piece of shrapnel that had almost severed his remaining leg. Roadhog ignored the strange noises coming inside, intent on finishing his book before the drowned Rat finished with his bath. It was the only bit of relative peace he’d had while keeping the brat locked in the motel room and he was not going to give it up to find out what Junkrat was doing in his bath. 

It was a bitch to reach his left shoulder with the bar of soap and he eventually gave up after a few minutes of struggle with, settling for dunking his shoulder in the water again a few times. Hog would understand, given that he probably didn’t want to be called in to help Junkrat wash himself anyway. Just as well- he didn’t like others seeing him without his prosthetics, not even Hog. It made him feel vulnerable, in almost the same way his cunt did. Unsettling and fine, all at the same time.

If only it was easier to hold onto thoughts in his head, it’d be easier sort everything out, but his mind seemed to let go almost everything except bomb schematics and chemical formulas. It didn’t usually bother him unless he was trying to think through things other than a heist, but it also meant he’d been avoiding the topic of London like the plague, both with Hog and with himself.

He truly didn’t know what had happened. Rat was almost positive he wasn’t in love with the big lug, even with the limited experience he had with the emotion. But Roadhog was important to him in a way that no other creature had ever been. They were no longer bodyguard and employer, yet he knew that neither of them would ever want to talk about the change in their relationship. It wasn’t their style to be open about feelings- hell, sometimes he didn’t even tell Hog when he was in pain, trying to avoid being too much of a burden on the bigger man. Roadhog always knew anyway, but he tried.

Even the kiss had been out of character. He preferred to show affection by annoying the big lug to death- simple but effective. It really was the only thing he knew how to do and Junkrat knew Hog didn’t mind, even when he sounded like he did. Or threw Rat over his shoulder for a particularly stupid pun.

It was probably one of those things destined to fade into his memory, along with almost all pieces of his life. Junkrat was fine with it. Hog was important and Hog was there, and that was that.

When he could see his reflection in the water, Rat finally stopped scrubbing. Bits of soap were stuck underneath his fingernails and the freckles on his face were back in full force, dusting his cheeks with evidence of his years in the sun. He stuck his tongue out at his reflection, puffing out his cheeks as wide as they would go, before he remembered his plan to maybe, finally, get the hell out of the damn motel room. This time he turned the tap on with his hand, watching as more water began to pour into the already-full tub. He had to bite his tongue to hold back a maniacal laugh as he started the process of pulling himself out of the tub.

It was slow going, seeing as he was completely soaked and liable to slipping without his peg leg. Rat leaned over the edge again and carefully began to slip towards his prosthetics, sending even more water flowing out onto an already soaked floor. He’d left a towel within easy reach and grabbed it to start drying off his stumps before he reattached his limbs, glad to see that it had escaped the worst of the splashing. Snatching his limbs out of the way of the already overflowing water, he hastily began to reattach his arm, casting furtive glances towards the door in case Hog was about to burst in and ruin everything. 

Once he’d tightened the straps of his arm with his teeth, he set to work on the leg, watching as more and more water began to run across the tile floor. He appreciated how high the water pressure was, to be able to fill this room so quickly- hopefully quick enough.

Junkrat stood, trying not to slip, and knotted the towel around his waist. It was torture to wait, but fate seemed to be on his side as Roadhog didn’t react to the water that was definitely creeping underneath the crack in the door. He wanted to fidget but he forced himself to remain still in case he couldn’t keep his balance on the tile.

And then, just like that, it was perfect.

“Oi, Roadie! I’m clean!” He crowed at the door and his answer was a confused grunt, Roadhog apparently looking up from his book for the first time in a while. Junkrat threw open the much abused door and spread his arms as a veritable tidal wave of water poured out, soaking his friend and his book and quickly spreading across the carpeted floor. 

Everything was still and he heard his heart beating in his ears.

**_“Jamison.”_ **


End file.
